A journey of finding primordial purity of thought,word and action within oneself.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Standing your ground

According to latest statistics
reported by SNEHA, a 24-hour suicide helpline in India, 2300 children under the
age of 14 took their lives last year. For most of us in India, we grow
insensitive to death numbers over a period of time. As long as the numbers don’t
personally affect us, they do not have time to occupy our mind space.

Let’s pause for a moment here.
Take a moment and write down the list of all your closest friends from memory.
Friends with whom you have shared some of the precious moments of your life and
those who make life worthwhile. My list with a lot of concessions on what I
consider ‘precious’ and ‘worthwhile’ makes it to double digits. Now imagine
that number multiplied by 200 times. Depressing this might sound, but imagine
losing 200 times of what you considered valuable in life for a suffering which
was easily avoidable. Not for lack of access to physical health treatment but
for lack of sensitivity and empathy amongst all of us. How do you know then if you
or your close friends are being victimized?

Bullying in my mind is the
exercise of power by the more powerful in subtle or explicit ways which leads
to loss of status, voice or self-esteem for the less powerful. The victims
could be children, girls and women, minority groups or even subordinates. It
could happen in any of our institutions – family, schools, colleges, workplaces
and social organizations.

The first step to developing
self-awareness about whether you are being bullied is to understand what your
rights as a free individual are. Children are much more vulnerable compared to
adults because of the fact that they are far more gullible and less
knowledgeable about their own rights. Therefore, I will focus on children and
how they should identify bullying. Also, having been a teacher in primary
school, I felt very strongly about any such transgressions. Though, it is less
an issue in my judgment when the children are younger than when they grow into
their adolescence, it is nevertheless important to teach the mindsets of equality
and empathy very early.

The first and foremost thing to
develop as a child is the skill of reflection. An ability to articulate your
thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideas in whatever language or form you are
most comfortable in. It could be even through
performing and non performing arts. If you are being bullied, it is important
to understand that you DO NOT have a problem. For this to happen, it is
important to understand your underlying thoughts, feelings and emotions.

If someone around you is making
you feel bad or low about yourselves, making you cry, or in the worst case
scenario physically abusing you, DO NOT accept the status quo. It is easier to
recognize the emotional and physical trauma but more difficult to understand
the psychological. In the case of first two, immediately stand up for your own
rights. If you are still being overpowered, seek help immediately from people
you trust - close friends, family or higher authorities. In the last case, you
need to communicate your emotions and feelings through words, pictures or
actions to trustworthy people. Feel free to ask their opinions on whether they
think what you experienced constitutes bullying.

Over a period of time as you
reflect more and continuously get feedback on managing your emotions, you
update your beliefs about what constitutes bullying and how to handle it. You also grow confident about protecting
others whom you think are going through phases you had been through. You will
also being doing a world of good to those bullying by making them recognize
their mistakes early. To err is definitely human, but to silently accept it is
doing injustice to yourself and the other person as well.

About Me

Indian by nationality, journeyman by choice, and will be something by destiny.I seek the most sought after question in human history - Who am I? And,hopefully in the process demystify some elements of the physical, and the metaphysical world around me.